Lando Norris has issued a warning to McLaren fans hoping that he, and the team, can continue their impressive form at the 2023 Mexico City Grand Prix, with the circuit not playing to their strengths.
McLaren‘s performance at the 2023 United States Grand Prix was another impressive showing, as Norris eventually took second place after the disqualification of Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton.
Norris had cautioned that McLaren might struggle to get to the same level in Austin as they had in recent races. Now, ahead of the race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the Brit has done the same again.
“The main thing is with the strengths of our car maybe a bit of straight line braking, but there’s no medium-high speed corners which is where we get a lot of our time back,” Norris told the press.
“In races we’ve always had to push high speed to make up for a lack of low speed performance, which causes more tyre degradation. It’s cool when you get away with it.
“We’ve got two tough weekends coming up, [with] very few mid to high speed corners, and I think what’s gonna make it [look tough] is the contrast of the last few weeks which have been so good and the tracks have suited us.
“Mexico generally kind of hasn’t so I think we’re just going to see a bit of a contrast. Aston [Martin] and Mercedes are going to be very competitive here just because it’s a lot of stop-start.
“We’ve known it all along. I think we know the tracks that we struggle with. We might not be as strong and some of our competitors might step up. I think we’ll see Aston [Martin] back again.”
Norris reflects on Austin result
Norris did give some insight into McLaren’s showing at the US GP, highlighting the difficulty he had in terms of race pace in Austin.
“In qualifying we didn’t expect to be as high up and the race pace was good,” Norris said to the press.
“Maybe not so much on Sunday. I had poor race pace compared to a few different cars – the Ferrari was alright, the Astons were quicker than me.
“But yeah I think we just made use of every situation we were in… to be as competitive as we were at a track we didn’t expect to be is a good thing.”
